Was Eren Yeager right?
Attack on Titan spoilers ahead!
The Rumbling plot twist of Attack on Titan has sparked countless online and offline debates among anime fans. These discussions have covered numerous moral and existential themes, analyzed how character attachment works, and even found some correlations to the current political situations.
Eren Yeager has lived his whole life behind the walls, he felt like an animal in a cage and his longing for freedom was the thing that kept him moving forward no matter what. Seeing countless tragedies and suffering immensely has influenced his mind and made him want revenge. So when he got the chance to get that revenge and protect the people he's lived among for his entire life, he took it. But can the death of thousands of people be justified by one boy's trauma?
Most fans agree that it can't.
Although the rumbling was necessary to scare the Marley and keep them from hurting any more Eldians, the length Eren has taken the rumbling to is horrendous. Marley's fleet and airforce were gone, the world saw the horror of the rumbling and was frightened of the giant titans that had been unleashed by Eren. When Armin sees that Eren has freed all the titans from the walls, he's puzzled since so many titans were unnecessary. And most fans agree with him.
However, it's impossible to ignore the viewers' feeling towards the main characters. We've been with Eren from the start, we've seen his character development, we've seen him fight and live through some dreadful moments.
The attachment to this character is strong, and it might be challenging for some fans to admit that Eren is no longer a little boy who just wants to be free, he's a ruthless murderer who's going to destroy the world.
Although Eren has shown signs of being this way from the very beginning of his story (may we remind you that he killed two men when he was just nine years old), we've been looking at the Attack on Titan story through his eyes, and we can't help but feel sympathy for his character.
It doesn't make us bad people, it just makes Isayama's writing that great.
Attack on Titan is a story of perspective. Up until the end of Season 3 no one even thought that what Eren and his friends were doing could be wrong. But here comes the Marley Arc and we're not so sure anymore.
To conclude, there can never be a justification for genocide and killing thousands of people. We can understand the circumstances that led to it and the characters that have made the decisions. Attack on Titan is a story of a great tragedy, of a boy who's been trying to survive and make the world a better place so hard that he lost his way and turned into the biggest threat this world has ever seen.